Ruth Rendell famous quotes

I think to be driven to want to kill must be such a terrible burden.
-- Ruth Rendell

#Thinking #Want #Driven

Many emotions go under the name of love, and almost any one of them will for a while divert the mind from the real, true, and perfect thing.
-- Ruth Rendell

#Real #Names #Perfect

We always know when we are awake that we cannot be dreaming even though when actually dreaming we feel all this may be real.
-- Ruth Rendell

#Dream #Real #May

To say that Agatha Christie’s characters are cardboard cut-outs is an insult to cardboard cut-outs.
-- Ruth Rendell

#Character #Cutting #Insult

It is not so much true that the world loves a lover as that the lover loves all the world.
-- Ruth Rendell

#Best Love #World #Lovers

I've had two proposals since I've been a widow. I am a wonderful catch, you know. I have a lot of money.
-- Ruth Rendell

#Two #Widows #Wonderful

Eunice Parchman killed the Coverdale family because she could not read or write.
-- Ruth Rendell

#Writing

Nobody really lives in the present.
-- Ruth Rendell

#Live In The Present

the English, although partakers in the most variable and quixotic climate in the world, never become used to its vagaries, but comment upon them with shock and resentment as if all their lives had been spent in the predictable monsoon.
-- Ruth Rendell

#Weather #World #Variables

Ten thousand years of civilization shed in an instant when you put a woman behind the wheel of a car.
-- Ruth Rendell

#Years #Civilization #Car

we dislike those we've injured.
-- Ruth Rendell

#Dislike

We no more forget the faces of our enemies than of those we love.
-- Ruth Rendell

#Enemy #Faces #Forget

they say you cannot make a noise to annoy yourself ...
-- Ruth Rendell

#Noise #Annoying

there must be a routine to life, a framework to hang life on. Routines were what kept you sane, gave you something to do at this moment and at that, definite places to go, positive things to do. Abandon it and that way madness lies.
-- Ruth Rendell

#Lying #Order #Way

It's living - a broad spectrum of living - that teaches you how to live, not philosophy. Philosophy teaches you how to think.
-- Ruth Rendell

#Philosophy #Thinking #Broads

The trouble with psychology is that it doesn't take human nature into account.
-- Ruth Rendell

#Psychology #Human Nature #Trouble

We don't say a man's ill if he's crazy about sex, if he can't get enough sex. Why should a woman be different?
-- Ruth Rendell

#Sex #Crazy #Men

The worst has happened ... it's rather liberating.
-- Ruth Rendell

#Worst #Liberating

When one has children one has no privacy. They take it for granted that what is yours is theirs, personal things and the secrets of your heart, as well as possessions.
-- Ruth Rendell

#Children #Heart #Secret

I can't exist without books.
-- Ruth Rendell

#Book

Maybe being married is talking to oneself with one's other self listening.
-- Ruth Rendell

#Self #Talking #Listening

I try, and I think I succeed, in making my readers feel sorry for my psychopaths, because I do.
-- Ruth Rendell

#Sorry #Thinking #Trying

Growing old is not all sweetness and light. Old women especially are invisible.
-- Ruth Rendell

#Light #Growing #Invisible

London underground took me on a tour of all the hidden places, the disused shafts and staircases... that was very interesting.
-- Ruth Rendell

#Interesting #London #Staircases

There are only two periods in a woman's life when she hopes to be taken for older than she is, under sixteen and over ninety.
-- Ruth Rendell

#Women #Taken #Two

I really do literally put myself into a character's shoes.
-- Ruth Rendell

#Character #Shoes #Boots

To be a classic, a novel should be original.
-- Ruth Rendell

#Classic #Should #Novel

I think about death every day - what it would be like, why it would happen to me. It would be humiliating to be afraid.
-- Ruth Rendell

#Thinking #Would Be #Humiliating

The knives of jealousy are honed on details.
-- Ruth Rendell

#Knives #Details

I get a lot of letters from people. They say "I want to be a writer. What should I do?" I tell them to stop writing to me and to get on with it.
-- Ruth Rendell

#Writing #People #Letters

While most of the things you've worried about have never happened, it's a different story with the things you haven't worried about. They are the ones that happen.
-- Ruth Rendell

#Worry #Stories #Different

Some say life is the thing, but I prefer reading.
-- Ruth Rendell

#Reading #Book #Life Is